The risk of the world’s major powers engaging in conflict is at its highest level since the Cold War, and the possibility of nuclear war breaking out is greater today than it has been for several decades.
On the final episode of Focus on the Future, Conor Lennon and Ben Malor from UN News concentrate on international peace and security, and how the Pact for the Future could help to reduce tensions.
In the Pact for the Future UN Member States pledged to do more to fight the climate crisis, a subject that has dominated several sessions at UN Headquarters this week.
On Thursday’s episode of Focus on the Future, Conor Lennon and Sachin Gaur discuss some of the big climate-related events, including a General Assembly meeting on sea level rise.
Reforming the Security Council, to make it more representative of today’s world, has been under discussion for decades. The subject made it into the Pact for the Future, adopted earlier this week. Does this mean that it is more likely to happen?
Global governance is the key theme of today’s show, which is dominated by the opening of the General Debate, when Heads of State, Prime Ministers and Presidents gather for speeches and backroom talks and deals.
Crippling debt burdens are holding many African countries back: some of them are paying more on repayments than on health, education and infrastructure.
On today’s show Conor Lennon is joined by Sachin Gaur from the UN News Hindi Unit, to cover the events focused on sustainable development and rethinking the entire international financial architecture. The big question is, how we can make it fairer?
Also, star wattage has been lighting up Headquarters. Edward Norton and Meryl Streep were among the artistic talents at HQ, advocating for the environment and Afghan women.
On the first episode of Focus on the Future, our mini-series running throughout High-Level Week of the UN General Assembly, Conor Lennon and Shanaé Harte explain what the Summit of the Future is all about, how to bring back trust between countries and why UN HQ was full of young people all weekend!
Contact us: thelidison@un.org
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Since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, the numbers attending High-Level Week at UN Headquarters in New York have steadily ticked upwards, and this year is set to be a packed event.
If that sounds overwhelming, worry not. UN News is releasing a daily podcast mini-series, designed to make sense of it all.
Each episode of Focus on the Future will have a main topic linked to the focus of the day, and will include highlights from the GA debate, original interviews, and a colourful wrap up of the side events.
The future of UN peacekeeping and the “new models” it needs to create to remain relevant in the 21st Century are set to be discussed at the landmark Summit of the Future taking place in New York from 22 September.
There are currently 11 UN missions around the world, mainly in Africa and the Middle East.
Their goal is to help countries torn by conflict to create the conditions for lasting peace.
Participants at the Summit of the Future will discuss, the global architecture for international cooperation, which includes peacekeeping.
Workers with the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, have some of the toughest assignments going in the humanitarian field, helping protect new mothers and babies often born in the midst of intense conflict zones.
For this episode of UN News’s flagship podcast, The Lid is On, two UNFPA representatives reflect on their life-saving work with UN News’ Shanaé Harte.
They discuss some of the most difficult challenges they've faced while providing insight into what changes can be made to improve women’s rights worldwide.
A Ugandan man, some of whose family and friends were abducted in the East African country, tells the story of his journey from war-torn childhood to becoming the youngest ever African nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Victor Ochen grew up in northern Uganda at a time when the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, was terrorising the region with violent abductions, forced child soldier recruitment, and widespread atrocities against civilians.
For 21 years the focus of his life was survival, struggling to find enough to eat in a variety of internal displacement camps.
The cultivation of sisal plants by some of the most vulnerable communities in southern Madagascar is helping to tackle desertification and allow people to stay on their land, thanks to a project by the UN Development Programme.
The seasonal Tiomena wind, a fiercely strong wind that blows over the coastline, has driven sandy soils across productive farmland forcing many people to give up their subsistence farming activities.
But the planting of sisal has helped to reverse the trend as Daniel Dickinson reports for the Lid is On Podcast from southern Madagascar.
